Sidney Blumenthal’s column today exposes the perversity of appointing John Bolton to serve as our Ambassador to the United Nations. Here are the most poignant lines in the piece, but I recommend reading it in full: — John Bolton has been named by President Bush as the US ambassador to the UN.

The time line just got pushed up. This just in from a very well-placed source: FYI, I’m hearing that they are trying to move this nomination very quickly because the longer it hangs out there, the more time opponents have to mobilize.

I have kept my powder dry these last several days on John Bolton’s nomination to serve as America’s Ambassador to the United Nations. I have just been trying to get my head around this gesture by Bush & Co.

When you have time today, read this very long and very good commentary by famed editor Tom Engelhardt on Woolsey, Podhoretz & Co. on their contrivance of World War IV. I particularly like this excerpt: “World War IV” does many other useful things as well.

George Soros must be getting ready for some incredible windfalls. Korea, Russia, and now Japan have discussed diversifying their foreign reserves portfolios and essentially offsetting their heavy dollar dependency with other currencies. Shockwaves.

According to a New York Times article out today by Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, a high-level panel is going to report to President Bush that our intelligence on Iran’s arms is inadequate. This hasn’t stopped the grind towards an Iran confrontation though.

Tom DeLay will be upset. Another liberal pol got a job in Washington — and is even co-opting a well-placed conservative. My friend Steve Elmendorf who ran Dick Gephardt’s world for more than a decade has tied up in a lobbying enterprise with Jack Oliver, “former money man for President George W.

Unless you are a Japan watcher, this post probably won’t interest you — unless you are into royals. And most Japan watchers for that matter aren’t interested in the imperial family and the goings-on within Japan’s secretive aristocracy. But I am going to write about this Tokyo soap opera anyway.

James Woolsey has been on the speech circuit, most recently at the 2005 Camden Conference up in Camden, Maine. I wonder how much folks are paying him to come up and scare them with his World War IV rhetoric.

This is from pages 22-23 of U.S. District Court (Charleston, South Carolina) Judge Henry Floyd’s important decision in the case of Jose Padilla: 2.